


love is a waiting game

by Nikkina



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:22:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1605017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikkina/pseuds/Nikkina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is possible to be remade into something you never were?</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is a waiting game

**Author's Note:**

> I loved Natasha in CA:TWS, but I'm holding out for a Black Widow movie.
> 
> Title from "Waiting Game" by Banks.

When she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. it was nothing more than a calculated risk, the better of two bad choices. She came in from the cold dirty and broken, with more red in her ledger than she could ever hope to wipe out.

She had never hoped for more than survival. Build fragile alliances, complete the mission, return to base, rest and repeat until it came time for a new alleigance, a new handler. Family, friends, lovers -- those were for the weak. The human.

Somewhere along the line, Natasha had started thinking of herself as another sort of creature altogether.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She brought Bruce Banner in for S.H.I.E.L.D. because she owed Clint Barton a debt. A risk for a risk, a mission for a mission, a life for a life. 

When she stood trembling, the gun in her hands, and pressed the comm with orders to stand down, it struck Natasha that above all she had always wanted to live. She would choose a life of infinite hardship and struggle over no life at all. These were the sort of thoughts that she cradled in her mind with displaced curiousity, while her body shuddered and creaked along of its own accord.

It's a strange sort of triumph when the scientist agrees to go along with her. Strange, Natasha thinks. When exactly did she start thinking of her missions as more than practical applications of skills, the rush of using her abilities just as she was ordered?

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coulson dies and it awakenes something buried deep in Natasha, the sharp twist like a knife in her gut. Grief, her mind supplies. And this revelation alone is staggering, absolutely terrifying in a way she hasn't felt in years. Because she hasn't felt in years, not really.

Natasha tries to tell herself that what she and Clint have is an understanding, as she sits by his bedside and gives comfort that feels like confessing a secret, no matter that he already knows. "Do you know what it's like to be unmade?" She does, she does. This strange new transformation, though, the sudden rush of relief that he will survive... what is this?

Is it possible to be remade into something you never were?

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The partnership with Steve Rogers is a surprise. His honesty startles Natasha, makes her feel impossibly vulnerable when it is, of course, the captain who is the one exposed. He is lonely, she knows. Even if emotion no longer comes naturally, she can understand it in others.

They joke with each other, and it feels like a lifeline. She is used to making jokes for her own benefit, to add a slash of levity to her endless, somber work. She isn't used to the targets joking back.

Steve, of course, is not a target. She does not owe him a debt. They are coworkers, teammates.

"Who do you want me to be?" she finally asks him. It's disguised as part of another argument, another conversation, but this is what she needs to know.

"A friend," Steve replies. 

She doesn't have the heart -- in every sense of the expression -- to tell him he's probably looking in the wrong place.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's the government inquiry that brings another emotion: joy.

Of course she has been happy before. She has taken pleasure in her work, in her skillset, in making a particularly well-placed remark. This incredible release, though, the sensation bubbling in her chest and tingling in her bones, is something else entirely.

It strikes her that she is finally free. S.H.I.E.L.D. is no longer, and though the handlers of her past are apparently alive and well, she owes her loyalty to no one.

Her first act is to retrieve the Winter Soldier's file for Steve. The thought crosses her mind that maybe, just maybe, this makes her a friend. When she warns him not to open the file, she means it and she doesn't. Years ago, she might have said that a man like the Winter Soldier, a human being cracked and hollowed out and filled with something else entirely, a man like that wasn't human anymore. A creature beyond saving.

Now, though, with these impossible things sprouting in her heart and a man who calls her 'friend' at her side? Well, Natasha can't be sure.


End file.
